Rat
by sebastienne
Summary: Peter Pettigrew. Misunderstood? He doesn't even think he understands himself.


Just a cowardly little rat.

Not capable of bravery or intelligence. Certainly not capable of love.

I'm sick of everyone belittling my emotions all the time – I already know that, when I have a crush on Jenny in the year above, it's a joke . . . and when Sirius likes her, they're going out – just like that.

I had no reason to expect I'd get anywhere with her I suppose. She's pretty, popular . . . and more than anything, Sirius Black likes her. He could have any girl in the school. Probably has.

I remember the way her hair was cut just above her shoulders. When teachers told her to tie her hair back, because it was falling in her eyes, she would refer them to the rule that stated 'hair that reaches the shoulders' must be tied back.

Her hair was brown, and naturally very curly. I loved the way that it bounced when she turned her head. When she started dating Sirius, she started ironing out the springy coils – because 'he likes it this way'.

I didn't hate him. Not then. He was good looking, funny, and just lucky, I guess.

I could forgive him anything. Even Jenny. He would just smile at you, lopsided and cheeky – the way he always looked in Animagus form.

His hair was always just the wrong side of too long in the eyes of the teachers. Looking at him shaking stray strands out of his eyes, you had to wonder that Padfoot actually came as a surprise to us all.

Wormtail didn't surprise anybody.

They needed me to stop the Whomping Willow. Moony and Padfoot would always run off into the Forbidden Forest, one becoming indistinguishable from the other as they scampered off towards some new adventure. No doubt they'd share it with me tomorrow at breakfast.

Prongs went with them, to begin with. But he came out with us less and less . . . preferring to spend his sleepless nights with a certain pretty redhead.

Either way, once I had served my purpose, they had a tendency to forget me.

If I were to look at this objectively, I'd realise that a lot of the time I'd cling on to Sirius' fur and be taken with them. We were Moony, Wormtail, Padfoot and Prongs – The Marauders. Our nights together were something I treasured.

But as James and Lily became inseparable to the point of comedy, something strange happened to Remus and Sirius.

They left me out more and more. To begin with, it was just passive. In lessons, we would always rotate between the four of us who sat with whom; but when James began to sit with Lily in every lesson, the same fixity began to affect Remus and Sirius. They would sit together and I would sit, alone, behind them.

But then I started to get the feeling they were avoiding me.

They might forget to wait for me when leaving the common room to go to lessons, or their eyes might skip past my saved spaces when looking for a seat at dinner.

And once I'd stopped the Whomping Willow for them, it was 'goodbye, Wormtail'. They were gone, up to whatever mischief they would be bragging about to me the next day. If they deigned to grace me with their company at breakfast.

I've always had to be self-sufficient so it didn't bother me that much. At muggle primary school (even though I am a pureblood wizard, my parents insisted on a muggle education for me, 'just in case'. Nice to know they had faith in my magical skills from such a young age) I was never the brightest of kids, nor the most popular.

When all the other children needed a 'baddie' for their games, guess who got chosen? We'd play games where there were 7 James Bonds and 1 Dr No, 12 Flash Gordons and 1 Evil Emperor Ming. But at least I got to play.

I began to feel like my whole history was repeating itself.

Except this time the circumstances were somewhat different – we weren't 10 years old any more.

We were 17.

One thing that hadn't changed in those years, however, was me. I just gave up on Remus and Sirius – stopped saving seats for them, stopped expecting them to say 'goodnight' as they mounted the stairs to the dormitory.

In retrospect, perhaps I could have read something into the fact that they were as close as James and Lily.

They were as close as James and Lily – their heads angled together in class, sharing private jokes. I would catch the odd word, words which hovered on the edge of my understanding . . . and stayed just out of reach. I never quite got what was so funny about the size of Professor Kelly's test-tube or the word 'homogeneity'. I never understood why they exchanged sideways glances and smirks whenever anyone said the word 'wild'.

I would sit behind them in every lesson, trying to understand some, any of what passed between them. In vain.

I couldn't understand why they seemed to take pleasure in excluding me – as if every conversation we split three ways was keeping them from some deeper purpose.

I tried to spend my spare time in the library; but I was such a slow reader, and found little that interested me. I would go out and fly round the quidditch pitch in large, aimless circles (even at muggle school I never was much good at sport). I would spend twice as long working on my homework, without improving my mark at all.

The interest I had in Remus' and Sirius' private universe started to intensify. I started sitting near them in the common room, pretending to read, listening to their conversations. Or I'd lie awake at night, listening to their whispered conversations – which always seemed to be just the wrong side of the periphery of my hearing. In fact, the low murmur of their voices was apt to send me to sleep without having understood any of it.

It's funny – no matter how agitated I was in my waking state, I never had any trouble sleeping back then.

One night, I suppose I'd been sitting by the Whomping Willow, staring forlornly into the forest, for about six transformations. I could see the first glow of dawn backlighting the Hogwarts buildings, and was listening intently for any sound of their approach. What I realised was that my hearing was much more acute as a rat than as a human.

That night there was no sub-vocal murmuring – exhausted by the sleeplessness of their night before, Remus and Sirius fell into a grateful sleep well before lights out.

But the next day, the now-normal glow of mischief was back in their eyes. I knew they'd be up to something that night.

If only I'd known what.


End file.
